Page content

Message from the President

An Institution in Transition

Photo by Dave Doody

Colin Campbell talks to Nation Builders—interpreters of the famous and the less well known in Williamsburg's history. From left, James Ingram as Gowan Pamphlet, Richard Schumann as Patrick Henry, Valarie Gray-Holmes as Lydia Broadnax, and Bill Barker as Thomas Jefferson. Each interpreter makes special appearances in the 301-acre Historic Area.

IN ITS SEVENTY-EIGHTH year, 2004, the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation reached more people, more effectively, than ever
before. A key to our outreach success has been to showcase our educational
excellence via technology, for example our distance learning programs. It was a
year of achievement across the spectrum of the foundation's endeavors,
encompassing not only education but our museums, as well as retail and
hospitality efforts.

It also was a year
of challenge, a year in which the institution faced a continuing decline in the
appeal of history museums, evolving demographics, shifting public tastes, and
sharp competition from other vacation destinations. It was a year in which we
were clearly reminded that this is a time of transition.

COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG'S
Electronic Field Trips—interactive history lessons televised to
classrooms nationally and internationally—reached about 200 new schools,
from Hawaii to Italy, from Alaska to Florida, and broadcast three new
productions. More than 9.3 million people, a 12 percent increase over the 8.3
million of 2003, visited our five Web sites to explore history and to research
our vacation and recreational opportunities.

More than a
thousand teachers participated in the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute
for Early American History. Each year this program introduces teachers to
Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area and museums and to the foundation's
instructional resources, and the teachers return to their schools to share with
their students and colleagues what they have learned. The ripple effects are
enormous.

The foundation
launched initiatives to bring to guests more interaction with interpreters
portraying people who founded America—not only men like Thomas Jefferson
and Patrick Henry but free and enslaved blacks, and women. Planning began for
an Education for Citizenship curriculum that will inform programming and
outreach in the years to come. The aim is to encourage each individual to
participate in the public life of his or her community to achieve greater
liberty, justice, and opportunity. It will be our fundamental orientation and
embrace introductory tours, interpretive programming, our Web sites, and a
secondary schools initiative.

In Merchants Square,
the foundation completed and dedicated the College Corner Building, an
architectural masterwork that includes WILLIAMSBURG At Home, as well as
Talbots, Legg Mason, and a planned expansion of Binns. The foundation's retail
outlets in Merchants Square were remerchandised and our product line expanded.
Catalog and e-commerce sales continued to grow, extending Colonial
Williamsburg's "brand," as did product licensing activity.

Renovation of the
Williamsburg Lodge began in earnest. When completed in late 2006, the Lodge
will be a state of the art conference center with 323 rooms for leisure and
conference guests. Across the street, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art
Museum began its move to larger and more accessible quarters adjoining the
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum as we perfected plans to transform its
former home into a spa.

The future presents great opportunity for us. We
became an active partner in Jamestown 2007, the umbrella group organizing the
commemoration of the 400th anniversary of England's first permanent settlement
in the New World, by making a $3 million, multiyear funding commitment. As a
Founding Colony Sponsor of the observances, Colonial Williamsburg will be an
active partner in quatercentennial events, provide our Visitor Center as a
regional guest hub, coordinate lodging reservations, and fulfill our
designation as the official hotels and conference site for the commemoration.

These and other 2004 initiatives were matched by the
record-setting support of the foundation's generous donors. Contributions
totaled more than $40 million, and drove the $500 million Campaign for Colonial
Williamsburg to 79 percent of its goal. There were more than 100,000 names on
the donor rolls again during the year.

The numbers are reassuring in that they demonstrate
enthusiastic endorsement of Colonial Williamsburg's purpose: preserving the
setting, presenting the story, and underlining the modern significance and
relevance of a pivotal time and place in our nation's founding.

THERE IS REASSURANCE
that Americans recognize the importance of Colonial Williamsburg's message, and
it gives us confidence as we tackle the challenges of declining ticket sales
and persistent operating deficits. During the past few years, we have closely
monitored the continuing pressure on historic sites across the country, and
responded with investments in programming, facilities, marketing, strategic
planning, and careful budgeting. Last year it became apparent that we needed to
probe the changing circumstances more deeply. We conducted extensive guest
research and brand analysis studies to help us better define our current
audience and its perceptions and expectations. Importantly, the findings also
serve as a guide to broaden our audience base.

The research
showed that public tastes and interests continue to change rapidly, that
children's say in family vacation planning is growing, that our core audience
is steadfast but aging, and that for many an emphasis on education is not as
compelling at vacation time as the promise of entertainment. Fortunately,
Colonial Williamsburg offers both. The key, though, is to be faithful to the
foundation's mission while focusing more on the connections between
twenty-first century realities and the eighteenth-century history that sets Williamsburg
apart—that is, focusing more on the future. This requires strengthening
and increasing the rich personal stories that make our programs relevant,
dynamic, and powerfully memorable to our current and prospective audience.

We continue to
mine the data for what they say about the interests of our larger potential
audience—and we will continue to change as the times demand. Colonial
Williamsburg is in transition. It is, however, maintaining its core focus,
developing responses, and embracing emerging opportunities, all within
the context of a timeless mission: "That the future may learn from the past."